


Grief is Another Word for Love

by Sorryimnotthatkindofdoctor



Category: Supernatural
Genre: "Let the Good Times Roll" coda, Angst, But can also just be read as TFW, Can be read as Destiel if you squint, Cas grieves, Cas has self-esteem issues, Episode Tag, Episode: s13e23 Let the Good Times Roll, Self-Loathing, There is no happiness here, not a fix-it fic, season 13 finale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-21
Updated: 2018-05-21
Packaged: 2019-05-09 22:12:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,371
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14724521
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sorryimnotthatkindofdoctor/pseuds/Sorryimnotthatkindofdoctor
Summary: Cas is alone in the bunker after Dean says YES to Michael & goes to kill Lucifer.





	Grief is Another Word for Love

Bobby & Mary go tearing out of the bunker in the Impala when Cas tells them where to find Sam & Jack. Mary demands to know where Dean is, but Bobby just pulls her along. He hears the doors slam, the familiar roar of the engine. Part of him wants to demand they take a different car – that one belongs to Dean. Dean should be the only one to drive her…

He doesn’t go with them. He can’t. He can’t bear to see Sam’s face or Jack’s. To see the disappointment in their eyes when they look at him. To know that he didn’t stop Dean. Oh, Sam would probably say there was nothing that Cas could have done, but the angel knows what the younger Winchester would really be thinking – of how Cas let them down, again. And Jack… the Nephilim would finally realize just how weak & useless Castiel truly was.

No, Cas cannot stand to see that. Not again. Not when he knows it’s true & not when the sound of Dean’s anguished cries inside his own head is still so strong.

He’d been able to hear the hunter. Michael hadn’t locked him away completely. Cas had still been listening when Mary & Bobby came back. When they left.

Even now, he can hear the softest, faintest whisper. The cursing. The cries.

It sounds so close to the voice Cas heard when he first entered Hell to seek for the Righteous Man. He’d followed those cries, but he hadn’t got there in time to save Dean from breaking & coming off the rack. His first failure for Dean.

Cas knows every second that passes as he sits on the steps. He can count them, feel every molecule that shifts as somehow the world keeps right on turning.

Seven thousand six hundred & twenty seconds later, he hears the barest rumble of Jack’s voice in his head – Bobby & Mary have made it there. The nephilim’s Grace will replenish soon enough, but for now he is weak. He’ll need time & rest. The cuts & bruises from Lucifer will fade in days, if that long.

The wounds to his heart & to Sam’s…

Cas struggles to his feet. He can’t be here when they return. He can’t face their pity or sympathy or disappointed looks. He staggers down the hall, only coming to a stop when he realizes that he hasn’t headed for the garage. He stares at the door, blinking.

Dean’s room.

He knows he shouldn’t, for so many different reasons, but he pushes the door open anyway.

He’s been in Dean’s room a number of times – this little space that the hunter carved out for himself & made his own. He had always felt honored when he was allowed inside, welcomed. Privacy & private spaces were so important to the Winchesters because they had so little of it… To be welcomed in meant something.

Just what, Cas had never pushed hard enough to try & find out, no matter how much he desperately wished to.

There are a few bent-spine paperbacks on the table near a lamp. A coffee mug from that morning it looks like. His closet is half-opened & his leather jacket is flung over the bottom of the bed where he’d thrown it after they got back to the bunker after Michael’s attack at the gas station.

Cas walks forward, his steps heavier than he’s ever truly remembered them being. Even when the Winchesters had been taken & Kelly Kline was missing, Cas hadn’t felt this heavy. Even when he’d charged Lucifer… It feels like the full weight of his true form was clunking along noisily, making the floor groan under his shoes.

Then, he’d had a plan. A mission. Not necessarily hope, but there’d been something he could do. Here…

He had no power. No ability to save Dean. It wasn’t even that Dean had been taken somewhere he could fetch him. He wasn’t in prison or the alternate universe. He wasn’t even in Heaven or Hell. Cas had entered both places to find Dean before & would do so again in a second. Dean isn’t dead like he’d feared when Amara was going to explode the sun & the hunter had gone to stop her.

Dean being dead could be reversed – whether Death wanted to let him go or not.

But Dean isn’t dead. Dean is trapped inside himself, held there by an archangel – next to losing Sam, Castiel knows this is the thing Dean has feared the most. Losing himself to Michael’s control. And Cas knows that there is nothing he can do to help. If he kills Michael, Dean dies right along with him. And short of killing him, Cas knows there’s no reason for Michael to release his sword.

Cas stops at the end of the bed & reaches down, his fingers barely brushing over Dean’s coat. Without really thinking about it, he sits down & pulls the coat into his lap. The leather is cool & soft under his fingers & he pets over it slowly.

He remembers how Dean had kept his trench coat after the leviathans. It had been in the trunk of the Impala. Cas wonders if he should keep Dean’s coat. If he’s allowed. It would be painful to keep – a constant reminder of what he’s lost. But Cas also can’t deny that part of him thinks he deserves it.

The angel slowly slides off the end of the bed, Dean’s coat piled in his lap, his fingers clenching tightly. He feels something in the pockets – perhaps a receipt. Cas doesn’t pull it out. He can’t look at something that Dean kept, something so human, just yet.

More than seven thousand six hundred & twenty seconds pass before he can feel the others getting closer again – it makes sense, he figures. They would’ve had to patch Sam & Jack up as much as possible. Would’ve had to explain everything. Possibly burned Lucifer’s body.

Would’ve had to explain to Mary what happened to her oldest son.

He should move. He shouldn’t be found here. Not in Dean’s room. Not at all. He should be gone.

But just like when Mary & Bobby had come in earlier, Cas can’t move. He can’t shift. Even when he hears Sam calling for him. Hears Jack. Hears the boots coming down the hall. Hears them stop.

Cas doesn’t look up, watching instead as a few tears drip down onto the leather, rolling off. He hasn’t even realized he was crying.

“Cas…” Sam steps into the room & Castiel can see the tips of his boots.

There’s blood on them. But it’s not Dean’s. Cas knows the scent of Dean’s blood.

“Cas…”

“I’m sorry,” Castiel says. He waits for Sam to go away or perhaps even to tell him to leave. To yell at him. To be cold & harsh & everything Cas knows he deserves. What happens is even worse.

Kindness in moments of self-loathing always cuts deeper than even the harshest insult, after all.

Sam sits down on the bed, his movements slow & heavy. Cas can feel the man’s physical pain – can feel the jagged edges of broken ribs in the way the atoms in his body shift around them. Can feel the heat of his bruises. Castiel’s hand shakes as he lets go of Dean’s coat to reach for Sam’s leg but Sam catches his wrist. His Grace flows through the touch anyway & the air around him seems to clear a little as Sam’s physical wounds heal. Sam takes a deep breath, his lungs moving easily under his ribs even though the air catches in his throat & his fingers tighten around Cas’ wrist.

Cas can’t do anything about the ache that is bigger than both of them that somehow manages to exist within his chest while simultaneously shattering him every second.

“Cas.”

Castiel doesn’t respond. His arm drops as if to pull his hand away, but Sam doesn’t release him. Cas knows that even without his full powers he is strong enough to pull away if he wants to, but he doesn’t. The pair of them sit in the silence of Dean’s room, Sam holding Cas’ limp hand as the angel stares down at the leather jacket in his lap.

It’s warmer now than when he’d first picked it up. But Castiel hardly notices…

END


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